The Black Reaper couldn't process what was happening to him.
He was being thrown. Over and over, the same result — impact, disorientation, the ground rushing up to meet him before he had finished registering the last hit. Every time he found his footing, Luxorious was already there, already moving, the daggers cutting angles that left no clean response. The Reaper dodged what he could and absorbed the rest, and slowly, somewhere beneath the fury and the pride, something else began to surface.
Nervousness.
Luxorious could see it. He pressed harder.
*Use your dragon breath.* The command arrived through the link to Lyoth, and the Reaper obeyed — releasing the attack in a wide arc. But Luxorious wasn't there when it landed. He had already moved, materializing close, impossibly close, and launched a paralysis strike that forced the Reaper to commit his full attention to one narrow window.
Their bodies were nearly touching now. The Reaper tensed for the kill.
Luxorious grabbed him by the face and threw him.
The Reaper hit the ground far away and skidded.
_____________
"That fool," Lyoth muttered, watching the Reaper tumble. "He's going to get himself killed."
A sword spun through the air toward him — Aron's throw — and shattered against an unseen resistance before it reached him.
"Look here," said Aron.
Lyoth turned. His eyes moved to the Death Blade in Aron's grip. He studied it for a moment — the rust, the age, the worn edges. Something moved across his face. *The same blade. The same bloodline. I killed a Norm before. I should end this one before he becomes what the last one nearly became.*
He rolled his shoulders slowly. "It has been nearly a thousand years since I last opened my full strength." His voice was almost peaceful. "Today is the day." He widened his stance and raised his daggers, and the power that began radiating off him arrived in waves that warped the air around him, heavy and suffocating and ancient.
Then he moved.
Before Aron could react, it was already done — Lyoth had crossed the distance and the impact was total. Aron took the hit with the full shock of someone who understood too late how wide the gap was. Lyoth didn't stop. He grabbed him and kept moving, smashing him repeatedly, methodically, until blood began to show. Aron swung the Death Blade at the right moment and bought himself a fraction of separation — Lyoth stepped back just enough, eyes calm, reading everything.
Aron barely stood. His legs were shaking. He could feel clearly that Lyoth was holding back — not struggling, not being pushed, but choosing a pace. Waiting for something.
Then the force arrived from behind Lyoth and the daggers sang against each other — collision, sparks, two sets of eyes locking across the blades.
Luxorious.
Aron's eyes widened. *He was fighting the dragon this entire time and he still has this much left.*
He charged without hesitation, coming in from the other side.
Lyoth spun and backed off, creating space between himself and both of them, his expression unbothered. He looked between them once.
"I'm not in the mood to take on two." Then, before the sentence had fully settled — they came.
The three of them collapsed into each other in a continuous exchange — blades and daggers moving in combinations too fast to fully track, Aron driving forward relentlessly, Luxorious holding position and waiting, patient and precise, for the single opening that would matter. Lyoth moved through all of it without breaking a sweat, deflecting, redirecting, handling two of the most dangerous fighters on the field as though the numbers made no real difference to him. Aron pushed hard enough that Lyoth threw him — far, high, the ground dropping away beneath him.
For a moment, everything slowed.
Aron was airborne, the battlefield spread out beneath him in pieces — fire and ruin and bodies and smoke. Then a figure appeared above him in the arc, and the kick drove him straight down. He hit the ground and water came out of his mouth from the impact.
He didn't move immediately.
Luxorious and Lyoth separated across the ruined field, both breathing harder now, something mutual and wordless passing between their expressions.
Luxorious looked at Lyoth. *The most powerful opponent I've faced in my entire life.* His jaw tightened. *And that son of a dragon is still breathing.*
Lyoth rested one of his daggers on his shoulder and began moving in a slow circle, unhurried, his eyes fixed on Luxorious at the center of it. It was not the posture of someone in a fight. It was the posture of someone who had already decided how the fight ends.
"I've heard everything about you," he said, his voice carrying the particular ease of someone who has nothing to prove. "The greatest warrior alive. The most powerful. The most fearless across every nation." He tilted his head slightly. "Personally, I consider all of that either a lie — or proof that you simply haven't shown me anything worth believing yet."
_____________
A high-pitched ringing tore through Aron's skull.
His blade had come free of his grip somewhere in the fall, lying just out of reach. He tried to push himself up. His arms buckled. He tried again.
A kick connected with his face and twisted his head back.
Then another. And another. The Black Reaper was standing over him, driving kicks in with brutal consistency, one after the other, the blood coming freely from Aron's face now, spreading into the dirt beneath him.
"WAKE UP! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOU? WHY CAN'T YOU STAND? COME ON — YOU ARE A NORM!"
Aron's hand shot out and caught the next kick.
He held it.
Then he punched him.
The Black Reaper went down, and something in Aron came loose — whatever restraint had been keeping pace with strategy and calculation simply stopped. He descended on the Reaper with everything, fists driving in again and again, each impact punctuated by the sounds of something being broken, the Reaper's attempts to defend himself becoming slower, weaker, less coherent.
*SMASH. SMASH. SMASH.*
Aron's teeth were grinding together, the words coming out in fragments between impacts.
*DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE.*
The Black Reaper stopped moving. He had nothing left. He could feel the end arriving with complete certainty, and he closed his eyes against it.
A blade came from somewhere and struck Aron — but the Death Blade rose on its own and met it, the collision producing a burst that pushed Aron back several feet and separated him from the Reaper's body.
The smoke settled.
The Black Reaper was gone.
Where he had been, a figure stood in the clearing haze — still, unhurried, the eyes cutting through the dissipating smoke like two points of cold red light.
Zeiris.